AC
Andrea Costantini
•Jenny and Linsday, two American tourists on vacation in Germany, find themselves stranded on a dark road in the middle of the forest due to a flat tire. After being approached by a kind of maniac, the two girls decide to venture into the forest in search of help, stumbling upon a luxurious villa. The owner is Dr. Josef Heiter, a surgeon specializing in the separation of Siamese twins, now retired, who offers to help the two young Americans. Instead of calling roadside assistance, the doctor drugs the girls and locks them in the basement, intending to use them for a crazy surgical project.
While browsing the pages of the internet that talk about horror cinema, it is practically impossible not to come across an article that talks about this human centipede creature. At first glance and with a furtive analysis of the title, what comes to the mind of the spectator who devours low-quality horror films is a terrifying mutant creature, as big as a building, with dozens and dozens of insect legs and a human head, in reference to the mythical creatures of sci-fi from fifty years ago. Understandable and quite disgusting.
Never was the truth so far away because the centipede in question is not a genetically altered arthropod, but the result of a delicate surgical intervention carried out by a doctor who is as brilliant as he is crazy and who perhaps has no equal in the history of the genre. And the result goes beyond the radiation-mutated creature. Much further.
A luminary in surgery, an expert in the separation of Siamese twins, decides to attempt what no one had ever done before. Not to separate. To unite. With a chilling explanation accompanied by a projector and slides, Dr. Heiter explains to the victims strapped to the operating table and to the audience glued to the screen his crazy project and the technique he will use to achieve it: uniting the three poor unfortunate souls by surgically connecting the mouth and anus and thus creating a creature never seen before, with a single digestive system. One can only imagine what will happen when the first element of the centipede, the head of the creation, needs to go to the bathroom.
Surely the idea of Tom Six, a Dutch director here also in charge of the screenplay, production, and editing, is one of the strongest and most disturbing of recent years. It was difficult to think of worse tortures than those we have seen in the various chapters of "Saw" or more horrible than the torments of "Martyrs" and yet, when it is said that there is no more imagination for this type of film, a new jewel of disgust appears. But it is not a splatter film as the plot would suggest, on the contrary, there are few bloody moments and in most of them the wounds are hidden by bandages. Despite this, the result is surprisingly effective. It gets into your stomach and makes you feel sick, even showing little, because in this film, what hurts is the concept.
In the wrong hands, the film could have become a bloodbath, aligning itself with the standard of today's splatter films, resulting in an ordinary product and ruining the brilliant original idea.
At the helm of this stomach-churning theater of horrors is Dr. Josef Heiter, a sadistic, pro-Nazi madman like no other and, above all, completely out of his mind, perfectly portrayed by Dieter Laser and who will surely enter the collective imagination as the mad doctor par excellence.
If one wants to find negative aspects in the film, one could talk about the poor characterization of the characters, but this is not necessary because the two girls and the Asian are real lab animals. We also do not have a backstory for the doctor where the motivation for his madness is dissected, but this is not necessarily a negative aspect and the aura of mystery that surrounds the figure of the surgeon accentuates his malice. There are some redundancies in the development of the story that, once the creature is presented, could make the viewer's attention wane. Although the only true lapse in style is the intervention of the police, unfortunately ridiculous and not at all credible.
That said, the rest of the film deserves the appellation of cult movie: the settings are perfect and the house bright, orderly, and clean, the garden well-kept, and the apparent normality clash with the dirtiness of the doctor's purposes, in a series of scenes that will remain imprinted for their madness, disgust, and attraction. A lover of the genre cannot help but be fascinated.
Finally, one should pause for a moment on the saying "put oneself in someone else's shoes" and, especially at the end, the effect will be devastating.
Trivia: the film is mentioned in an episode of "South Park" titled HUMANCENTiPAD where Steve Jobs plays the role of Dr. Heiter and unites Kyle with other people to power an iPad.
It is the first chapter of a trilogy composed of "First Sequence", "Full Sequence" and "Final Sequence". The basic idea of the trilogy is the same, but the disgust and the number of components of the centipede increase exponentially.